


It's All In Your Head

by another_crack_in_time_and_space



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: ADHD, Character Study, Doesn't really have a linear setting, Hurt/Comfort, Swearing, neurodivergent, self talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 08:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12744381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_crack_in_time_and_space/pseuds/another_crack_in_time_and_space
Summary: They laugh, make jokes at his expense about his meds. He laughs. Makes the same shitty jokes. It's not so fun when he has no executive functioning and has been staring at the murder board for 12 straight hours, hyper fixated on the width of his yarn.orADHD is an actual disability





	It's All In Your Head

It shouldn't still be affecting him like this, right? It was his run away mouth in school, his bouncing up from the seat, all the trouble he caused. It wasn't laying on the floor, watching the steam rise off his sixth cup of coffee. This is something else, depression or mania, a painful in between of the two. His skin has been singing to him and its fucking weird and freaking him out. He knows the symptom of a caffeine overdose but ignored his cut off point. People with ADHD often self medicate with uppers, but he's too poor for the good shit and has his own pills, even if he jokes about selling them all. Or taking too many, only that one wasn't a joke, but his executive functioning was _so low_ and Scott NEEDED him. Until he didn't, of course, but that was another conversation. Not that Stiles wasn't also thinking of it and repeating conversations in his head over and over, but like, if he only had 2% of his attention it than fine, the rest could still run. 

Stiles Stilinski has ADHD. Combined type. 

The pack doesn't get it. Not really. Not like it counts. Stiles is the planner. He figures it out. He's so incredibly smart! His disorganization is a sign of genius. That's what Buzzfeed says. It would never be anything else. The inappropriate things he says aren't really impulse control. It's humor. He's just _funny._ Hilarious, actually, and that he believed about himself too. But that mouth, the sarcasm, the stuttering, he never thought before he spoke. He couldn't. There is no filter in his head. 

The thing about ADHD brains is there is no filter, no priority list, or none that makes sense to anyone else. Once when he was twelve all he cared about was the anatomy of big cats. He used to repeat the muscle systems under his breath until he memorized them all, but sometimes he'd have to repeat them, action became compulsion. Scott didn't ever talk to him about it, but that wasn't really his wheelhouse. Scott was always around for the ride, even if Stiles was being capital-W Weird, which was all he felt he could ask for in a friend. It was all Stile's needed anyway. And when Scott became pack, pack became hyperfixation. Special interest. Criminology was the only thing that made sense for months. 

And as for friends, high school threw him for a curveball. Stiles usually sucked at keeping more than one friend. Multiple conversations, lots of things to remember and coordinate, all of his friendships usually fell through. But they all had to spend time with him. He was Scott's brother. And they all liked him, which was even harder to believe. Even Derek, who was as sour and cynical, and knew that about Stiles, even if everyone else just saw that comedy. Lydia was new. She had been a hyperfixation for a while, which felt very wrong for him, but now she was friend. And they made sense. But Lydia was planned smart. Potential and execution. She didn't understand winging it, getting by on luck, and trying so hard Stiles thought he would drive himself to an emotional break just to lose it when he needed to prove himself. Lydia had her own road blocks and the whole wailing woman thing threw a wrench into her plans for MIT, Stiles knew that, but it wasn't this hell brain. He wasn't even allowed to have plans for MIT. He didn't get to think that far. 

And that was the worst part of it, even if he did try (which he did, a lot), his own body betrayed himself again and again. He watched his mother fall to pieces as her brain turned inside out, and now, at times like these, Stiles really thought he would too. Maybe not dementia. But the mania that made him feel like he poured hot soup into his brain, the nightmares, the void Stiles he never trusted was totally gone. Right this second, watching steam rise up out of his coffee, he felt kind of off. Normal people didn't lay on the ground and watch. He had just spent two days with the door locked trying to figure out his crime board. Had he eaten? Would it have mattered? But he was helping. Trying to manipulate his own disability to help because that's just what Stiles does. Failing classes, skipping meals, avoiding sleep, but at least he could figure out what the next big bad was going to do. 

There are days when he wishes he could be normal and put it all away. Shut his eyes, click his heels, and have an ounce of executive functioning back. He's not sure any of his friends would forgive him. For certain, his personality wouldn't be just badly timed jokes and bursts of anger at high stress time. Would he even know himself without his ADHD? Some days it was all he could do not to scream and start beating his own head in. Basic actions were so hard, all the time. Driving? hard. Conversation? hard. Reading? After everything, one of his biggest fears. He made lists upon lists, his room was covered in notes he had scribbled down so he wouldn't forget, but when he went back to them he had no clue what he was trying to say in the first place. Stiles Stilinksi was unreliable, and everyone knew that. But he tried so fucking hard. Just once he'd like to not feel like a failure. Every time his plans had ever gone through they all ended up near misses, or basically really well executed accidents, and this is what the safety of Beacon Hills had been hinged on for years. 

Stiles made an angry noise in the back of his throat and scrubbed his face with both of his hands, rising to a sitting position with the coffee between his knees. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He scratched the back of his head and sighed, picking up his coffee and looking through his lashes at the board. He wouldn't get shit done, he knew that, but he had to at least pretend or he'd start yelling at himself again. 

"Alright, dude, lets just get something down." He bargained to himself, still sitting in the quiet, the only light being a lamp desk. Capital-w Weird. 

And there it was, tucked in the corner. The article he cut out and forgot about. The missing link. 

Stiles, 1. Hell brain, 0.


End file.
